The chapter begins with Claudia's homage to her father, describing him with winter metaphors and similes. His steely, intimidating eyes become a "cliff of snow threatening to avalanche," and "his eyebrows bend like black limbs of leafless trees." Mr. MacTeer is a stark contrast to the previous chapter's description of Cholly Breedlove. MacTeer is a no-nonsense, hard-working man who, like his wife, shows his love for his family more through his deeds than through his words. He works night and day to keep the family safe and financially secure.
In addition to Mr. MacTeer, this section introduces Maureen Peal, a light-skinned black girl who seems to personify enviable white qualities. Maureen is lauded by teachers; Pecola is ignored. Like Jane in the primer, Maureen, the "high-yellow dream child with sloe green eyes," is considered pretty and perfect; in contrast, Pecola is black, flawed, and ugly. Most of Maureen's black schoolmates are blindly enslaved by Maureen's "whiteness"; we know this because of Morrison's description of how Maureen's brown hair is styled: It looks like "two lynch ropes [hanging] down her back." In other words, to worship blindly that which is white is to put your head in a noose.
These black children have been so thoroughly taught to revere whatever is white, or even white-ish, that they are blindly in awe of a black girl who is not even white. She is only "high yellow." Maureen's eyes are not round, blue Anglo eyes; they are described as "sloe," meaning very dark and slanted. In Maureen's case, hers are dark green — certainly not blue. Moreover, Maureen has a "dog tooth," a pointed tooth on the side of the upper jaw, near the front, that has been pushed forward by the teeth on either side growing behind it and toward one another until the dogtooth is prominent, fang-like. In short, Maureen is not really pretty because she has yellowish skin, dark and slanted green eyes, and a fang-like tooth exposed when she smiles. However, being much lighter than all the other black children, she is prized and envied by most of them.
